JOIN US'Communication disorders are related to genetic factors'
Genetics Professor and former director of National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) H A Ranganath said effective counselling for the parents of the children suffering from communication disorders, helps in the overall development of the latter.
With an objective to educate speech and hearing professionals about genetics and to update their knowledge on the role of genetics in preventing communication disorders at various levels, the Departments of Speech-Language Sciences and Prevention of Communication Disorder, All India Institute of Speech and Hearing (AIISH), had organised a national seminar on ‘Genetics in Communication Disorders,’ here on Friday.
After inaugurating the event, he maintained that the results of the investigative study suggests that the field of communication sciences and its disorders is not keeping pace with the demands of new advancements in the genetics and genomics.
Quoting a few studies, Ranganath said, research had revealed that communication disorders were related to genetic factors as it was noticed that children facing problems had a family history of disorders.
“It is important for the speech and hearing professionals to understand some of these genetics factors, which may facilitate counselling the parents in terms of prevention of disorders at various levels. Although many speech and language disorders are differentiated at clinical level, they are highly morbid with each other. Many children do not fall neatly into a single diagnostic cluster, and others may change between categories as their language develops,” he said.
Stressing on the genetics of communication disorders, he said, the developmental speech and language disorders cover a wide range of childhood conditions. Today, epigenetics is typically defined as the study of heritable changes in gene expression that are not due to DNA sequence. The disorders are, now, a result from multiplex interactions across various genetic and environmental factors, he added.
The event also discussed the recent findings on the genetics related to communication disorders. AIISH Director S R Savithri, Department of Speech-Language Sciences Head N Sridevi, and Prevention of Communication Disorders head Jayashree C Shanbal were present.